By now you've had the chance to see a bit of what watercolor will do. and, hopefully, are starting to feel excited about its possibilities.So, let's take a minute to review what we've done in the last two classes.

Watercolors can be very transparent or semi-transparent. We'll be experimenting with this more in the weeks ahead. Knowing how the colors act is important in mixing by a technique called glazing - which we will be doing this week.

The lightest colors are in the highest part of the color wheel - in the areas of yellow. The darkest are in the lower - around the purple. But we canalso mix colors that are dark.

If you use the best quality supplies, you will have the best results. Its better to have 3 professional colors than to have 12 student grade.Paper is also important. Arches is a great choice. Fabriano student grade paper is inexpensive but works very well for exercises. However, it won't hold up to as much manipulation and may very well tear when you are working on a painting.

Last week we did the preliminary work on a painting with a very light wash over the entire paper. It's very important this be completely dry for this week's class when we will be working with masking fluid and glazes.

As an inspiration for you here are some good youtube beginning demonstrations to watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8LVs5ql5t0 This is a good introduction to pigments, granulation, and mixing on the paper by Stephen Quiller

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpdTv1mlRrU This is working with color by mixing it on the paper by Birgit OConnor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbDawbOO8XY This is the first part of four part tutorial on watercolor techniques. I highly recommend watching this to learn about techniques we are using in this class and others that we won't have time to explore.